Works on Paper
Trudi Jaeger has had a long career as an artist. After studying in London between 1969 and 1973, she came to Bergen in 1974 on scholarships from the British Council and the Norwegian Government. The stay proved to be permanent and the city has been her base now for almost 40 years. I want to focus on her first period in Bergen, as it is relatively unknown, but also because it shows the strong continuity in her production.
Throughout her career, Jaeger has worked with both painting and drawing. Painting was her main medium in the eighties and nineties. After 2000, what Jaeger calls ‘brush drawing’, drawing with brush and oil on paper, came to occupy a more central place in her output. I have chosen to write about the drawings from 2003 and onwards, since this is when she starts using specially designed tables to present her works. These horizontally placed drawings contrast with ones more conventionally placed on the wall. By doing this, Jaeger gives the exhibition space an extra dimension and this manner of display has become something of a trademark for her.
NORWEGIAN DIARY 1974–75
Poetic abstraction rooted in reality
Jaeger first rented a student room in the Fantoft area. The immediate view outside her window looked upon a mountainside as tall as the block of student flats she lived in. This mountain wall became her first Norwegian motif. The works from this period, many of them painted in oil and pastel on layout paper, are characteristic of Expressionism. She has experimented with different blends of turpentine, and all the pictures are in A1 format and vertically oriented. Paint covers the paper, except for the upper part – the air and light above the mountain wall. These works are expressive, painted with broad strokes, often with elements of drawing on the surface, such as in Norwegian Diary No. 4 from 1975 where we see jagged, abstract lines on a large, blue plane. Light emanates from the upper part of the painting, falling down on the right side and onto the lower surface. It is a simple composition with slight nuances in colour and form. In this work the wall is experienced as compact and massive with a nearly insistent closeness. These Fantoft works were all painted on-site, a practice Jaeger has seldom returned to in her later production.
In 1974, Jaeger travelled through Sogn and large parts of the mountainous region of Western Norway. She returned to Bergen with a wealth of new impressions, which she then turned into paintings – a kind of travel log – reminiscences from a journey.
In the above-mentioned Norwegian Diary No. 4, it is clear how Jaeger already was able to abstract the physical object of the rock wall at Fantoft. We can still see the outline of the summit, but the actual wall has become colour and light. The colour is so thinned out with turpentine that the painting is more or less transparent, giving it the properties of an aquarelle, becoming the poetry of light and colour more than face of rock.
Since the Romantics, painters have come to Norway to be inspired by the mountains. Trudi Jaeger is also inspired, but you will not see many mountains in her pictures. She is less interested in depicting landscapes than in expressing the emotional responses to them through abstraction. Images emerging from experiences of nature become repeated in abstract works as expressions of her states of mind and feelings and are universal. This relationship typifies her many works that deal with nature and landscape.
The mountain paintings from 1974/75 were made after Jaeger returned to Bergen; she did not use field sketches. Nevertheless, these pictures do stand out in her production, and she considers them to be amongst her works that are closest to nature. The title of the series, Norwegian Diary, underlines this. Jaeger describes her meeting with the steep mountains as a profound and unexpected experience. Most of the pictures she subsequently painted in her flat at Fantoft render a sense of verticality. The upper blank unworked-on spaces indicate and suggest the sky above the mountains.
The artist herself refers to these mountain pictures as paintings. She would later distinguish between works made on canvas (paintings) and paper (drawings). Of course, choice of brush was also important in this regard. However, the fact that she used of paper for the mountain paintings was more of a practical than an aesthetic consideration.
CONTINUITY AND TRADITION
Few artists can demonstrate the same continuity as Trudi Jaeger. Throughout her career, apart from a more expressive period in the eighties and nineties, her work has been characterised by what one might, somewhat vaguely, call a subdued Abstract Expressionism. Within this tradition, she has been able to find new variations and forms of expression. Eastern art has also been a source of inspiration, such as Chinese painting from the period of the Song Dynasty (960–1279), and Jaeger sees her art as an encounter between east and west. Her affinity with calligraphy is obvious, especially in the paintings. Use of dark colours on light backgrounds is perhaps the most striking feature, and one can also trace the quiet sensitivity that is found in Japanese and Chinese landscape painting traditions. Nevertheless, in my view, it is western influences that are more prominent. Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly can be mentioned, two artists who inspired her through their combination of painting and drawing. Richard Serra refers to Twombly’s art as ‘Drawing paintings and painting drawings’, a description that fits Jaeger equally well. She does distinguish between drawing and painting, but when drawing she tends to be more experimental, trying out new approaches that can be used subsequently in her paintings. What Jaeger calls drawings are in fact paintings, technically speaking, but she has used the brush to draw lines rather than to shape forms. Her most gestural works are the drawings, which Jaeger describes as near-spontaneous expressions of thoughts and moods. The paintings are more thoroughly prepared and complex. As far as the relationship between sketch and painting goes, we might imagine the great English landscape painter John Constable (1776–1837) saying something along the same lines, although for him the painting would always be more important than the sketch.
EXHIBITION STRATEGIES
Typically, Jaeger will be working on several pictures at the same time. They stand in dialogue with each other throughout the process and elaborate the same issues and themes. In fact, she usually exhibits her works in series. This implies a dialectical strategy where the character of each picture is determined and strengthened in the relationship it has to the other works in the series. An example of this reciprocity is Lucent. Starting With Indigo 1, and Sometimes the Leaves Turn Dry and Fall Before They are Beautiful 1, two works that were exhibited at Galleri Langegården in 2011. What strikes us in these pictures are the undulating movements. Small, opaque areas alternate with translucent ones, creating a rhythmic effect. However, where Lucent 1 is dynamic and expressive, its counterpart appears subtle and poetic. By juxtaposing the pictures, these contrasting qualities are made clear to the viewer.
In 2003, Jaeger began using specially made tables. The first time was at an exhibition at Visningsrommet, USF, Bergen. She placed layers of drawings on seven tables. Through the upper sheet of paper, one could see the underlying drawings, and thus a sense of depth was created. She has repeated this technique in several of her later exhibitions. It was also important how the drawings on the tables interacted with the ones on the walls. Jaeger speaks of tonalities, spaces that are singled out, when describing individual pictures as well as spaces within an exhibition.
With Transparens – en handling i tid og rom (Transparency – an action in time and space) in 2007, Jaeger introduced a new way of showing her pictures. In front of an audience, she lifted five drawings, one by one, from a table. Held up against the light, the drawings became transparent, and were then carried to another table. All was conducted in silence and in slow motion. It reminded us of a ritual performance, although the artist prefers to use the term ‘a still showing’. The idea is to keep the element of the private in public space. This highlights the carefully planned nature of Jaeger’s exhibitions, as well as her use of space. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that she was lecturing at the Bergen School of Architecture at the time.
THE PROCESS
For Jaeger, the process behind a work of art has a value in itself. It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the Process Art movement. In 1952, the American critic Harold Rosenberg coined the term The American Action Painters when referring to Jackson Pollock and others. He wrote: ‘At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena on which to act – rather than a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyse or to “express” an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.’ Many artists within this tradition would give the ‘event’ an existential dimension, among them Trudi Jaeger. Like Pollock, she works with her work in a lying position, either on the floor (painting) or on a low table (drawing). This process involves the body in a different way than painting in a standing position does. The blank paper or canvas is for Jaeger a ‘silent space’ - a charged void full of possibilities. This is a fundamental experience for artists of her kind. Therefore, she also tries to begin with a blank mind, with no preconceptions about the final product. The first brush strokes are quite randomly applied, inspired by a fragment of an idea or impression. After this, the process becomes a dialogue between the artist and the paper, where she acts upon what appears in front of her. For Jaeger, this dialogue is spontaneous and guided by the diffuse boundary between intuition and reflection. Intuition, based on experience and competence, is of course vital in our everyday lives. For the artist it is a question of intuitively knowing where to place the next brush stroke. Being in the process, attentive and alert, is a condition for the dialogue to succeed. This is what makes the picture come to life.
THE PICTURES
Light
I have already noted the importance of light in some of Jaeger’s works from 1974, for example Norwegian Diary No. 43. Light would become central in all her later productions, a theme indicated by titles such as Changing Light (2003–2004), Haruki (Sunlight, 2009) White drawing (2009) as well as Lucent. Starting with Indigo and Stroking Light (both series of drawings from 2011). It is primarily through the use of colour that she creates these effects of light. However, it is also a question of how she uses the paper and makes it an integrated part of the work. The paper is always more than a neutral background, even when the actual drawing is quite minimal – such as in Lemon (Wanderings, 2009) and Maroon 1, 2 and 3 (Kozo, 2009). In the former work, a single movement starts from the lower left corner and then bifurcates into the picture. We see thin lines and small areas of colour that dissolve into the light, cream-coloured paper. In this way, the paper is activated and becomes a luminous surface on a par with the other elements of the drawing. In other pictures, such as the Kozo-series, she uses dark paper to contrast and enhance the whiteness of the drawing.
When light is given an existence independent of naturalistic descriptions and situations, it can attain an immaterial dimension. This is especially the case in some of her simpler, less expressive drawings, such as Stone (Haruki, 2008) and Lemon (Wanderings, 2009).
SPACE AND BRUSH MARK
Space is important in Jaeger’s pictures. She creates it through the interaction of different brushes and by applying the paint so thinly that the layers beneath are visible. Other times the brush leaves parallel furrows from the hairs, almost like perspective lines, which gives an effect of depth and space. Mauve Drawing and Red Drawing II (Isola, 2007) are only two examples of many drawings where Jaeger uses this technique. Brush drawing of this kind can also give other effects. It can create positive contrasts with other types of strokes. Moreover, the parallel traces of brush hairs can give the impression of something regulated and controlled. At the same time, they share the energy and spontaneous character that we usually see in the other strokes – giving rise to visual tension.
ROMAN DRAWINGS
In spring and summer of 2012, Trudi Jaeger spent two months in Rome. Long walks along the ancient Appian Way and the streets of Rome evoked a vivid experience of past and present times. Historical parks such as Il Giardino Segreto della Farnesina, a small park belonging to Villa Farnesina, would inspire many of her works from this stay – especially the blossoming lemon trees and their fruits.
All of her Rome pictures are based on concrete, physical experiences. The further process has a double movement. At the same time as the work of art seeks its own life, the experience that inspired it needs to be conserved. This can be said of Jaeger’s drawings in general, something she refers to as authenticity. As such, it is a concept with two levels: lived emotions and autonomous art.
A couple of her drawings from Rome have some interesting lines and movements. They run in different directions and there is no element binding them together. Whether these conflicting lines can be interpreted in the light of her diverse experiences in Rome remains an open question.
During her stay in Rome, she made many sketches with ink and brush. These were primarily made to catch the atmosphere and her impressions of the place and were not studies for drawings or paintings. Nevertheless, they have qualities in their own right, and are also extremely delicate.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Jaeger’s artistic process always starts with an idea or a mood. This can be prompted by a landscape, but can also come from poetry, music or other sources. At the end of the process, these experiences have been transformed into reminiscences. However, the emerging work of art will also have its own becoming. This becoming has some striking features. Her pictures are characterized by movement and energy, but are at the same time subtle and restrained. Although some of her drawings have figurative elements, they always appear as dynamic and open-ended.
In Red Drawing 2 (Isola, 2007), for example, we see the trace of a figure that almost covers the entire paper. In Sometimes it Turns Dry and the Leaves Fall Before They are Beautiful II (the title is taken from the American poet William Carlos Williams) from 2011, the ‘figure’ is placed far to the right. Some of her works are very minimalistic, such as the Isola-series from 2007 and Lemon (Wanderings, 2009). ‘Less is more’, the well-known slogan of the great functionalist architect Mies van der Rohe, is one that can equally describe many of Jaeger’s drawings. This simplicity goes hand in hand with the sensitivity they impart.
Brush technique and choice of colour are of course important factors in this respect. Moreover, Jaeger is very particular when it comes to paper quality and how it influences her brush strokes. In 2011, she had an exhibition at Galleri Langegården, just outside Bergen, a gallery that has been important to her over the years. Its title, Touching Down. Imaginations, indicated how important touch is for the artist when applying brush to paper. Touch refers to tactility but also to the act of touching upon or mentioning something. It is a visual but also a tactile form of art.
Any description of Jaeger’s works runs the risk of being over-elaborate or suggesting some type of critical closure. The artist would resist any such attempts – her aim is to create dialogue and the artistic process should be an open-ended experiment. Sensitivity, openness and receptivity are keywords – and, of course, these qualities can describe human beings as well as works of art. In this respect, Jaeger’s abstract paintings have something to tell us about our own lives.
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Dag Sveen, Professor Emeritus, Art History, University of Bergen
This text was written for the publication Lucent. Starting with Indigo. Trudi Jaeger, Works on Paper. Published in 2014.